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JAIN DIGEST
Lord Mahavira; personal salvation must wait. Thus was born the Shikharji, the most important place of pilgrimage for all Jains. idea of traveling outside India and of organizing missionaries to promote the message of Lord Mahavira (the principal Like Mehrauli in New Delhi, Siddhachalam has large forest organization he founded after coming to North America was areas. In it, Muni Sushil Kumar engaged in deep meditation. unsurprisingly called International Mahavira Mission, later Since 2008, there is a life-size statue of the Muni in one of the renamed as International Mahavira Jain Mission).
forest areas close to where he engaged in meditation. Every
year in the third weekend of April since then, his followers While evidence had begun to emerge that Jain monks at the come together to unveil that statue (the statute is veiled every time of Bhagwaan Parsvanath and Bhagwaan Mahavira likely year after Deepawali). That weekend is significant: on April 21, had traveled outside India, the idea of a Jain monk traveling 1942, Sardar Singh became a Jain monk, on the same date in outside India by use of mechanical means was abhorrent to 1986, he was publicly conferred the title of a Jain Acharya in many in the Jain community: such a step had not been taken an event attended by the President of India. Also, on April 22, in at least two millennium by anyone who vowed to remain 1994, he left for his heavenly abode. a monk. Yet, on June 17, 1975, the dutiful disciple took the unprecedented step of boarding an aircraft to travel outside Muni Sushil Kumar envisioned that in the 21st century, Jains India. Monkhood, after all, is a personal quest in pursuit of in America would rekindle the light lit by Bhagwaan Mahavira one's mission in life. It is not leaving one community to merely and be exemplars to the world of a more enlightened form of join another.
religion. One that is free from the divisions of sects and rooted
in its essential principles of ahimsa (restraint from intentional The decision of Muni Sushil Kumar was so significant and or careless injury to all living and non-living beings) and momentous that members of India's federal legislature anekantvad (recognition that no person has a monopoly on convened at the Parliament House to give the monk a truth). ceremonial send-off, even as thousands lined up near the Palam airport in India's capital to denounce the step. Jain Then, as now, we and our children, and their children, and all religion, as customarily known, was being shaken to its roots. those in search of the soul within will find her or his way to
Siddhachalam to commemorate the colossal life of the Sardar Muni Sushil Kumar traveled, among other places, to America. Singh we lovingly call Guruji. Here, he inspired the founding of many institutions, temples, courses on Jainism in American universities (for example, in Columbia University in New York City), and representation at An earlier version of this article was published by Siddhachalam the United Nations. Many disciples of his from Main Street on April 22, 2014, to mark the 20th anniversary of Guruji's America were not Jains by birth and had never heard of devlok. Guruji also inspired the founding of JAINA. To read Bhagwaan Mahavira. They followed him joyously like a band more about Guruji and Siddhachalam, please visit www. of missionaries when he used his powers of meditation to siddhachalam.org. transform an abandoned, haunted campground in rural, northwestern New Jersey, into the place we now know as Shri Siddhachalam Jain Tirth. Siddhachalam means a mountain in homage to the siddhas. Jains regard it as a place of pilgrimage; for many among the thousands who visit it each year, it continues to be suffused with Muni Sushil Kumar's sacred vibrations and energy. In 2012, in his honor and inspired by his teachings, there was dedicated at Siddhachalam's 121acre hilly terrain, the world's first, to-scale, complete replica of
PICTURES OF SHIKHARJI AT SIDDHACHALAM
Inspired by the teachings of Guruji and in his honor, his devotees recently replicated Teerthadhiraj Shikharji at Siddhachalam in Blairstown, NJ. Shikharji in Jharkhand, India, is the sacred place where 20 of the 24 Tirthankars of the current avasarpni attained moksha. The last Tirthankar to attain moksha there was Bhagwaan Parsvnath, our 23rd Tirthankar.
GURUJI WITH CHILDREN
Guruji and children loved each other's company. His birthday (June 15) is celebrated as Children's Day at Siddhachalam. Picture shows children in a camp held at Siddhachalam, an animal and nature preserve that Guruji founded as an ashram in 1983 in Blairstown, NJ.
Protection of the environment for the benefit of all beings, not just humans, was a cause he dearly held.
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AUG- NOV 2014
